Many paroxysmal pains in the extremities and joints are reported, particularly, in the left hip-joint; and movement is said to relieve; damp weather aggravates.
Lacking any connection an irritative state of the meninges after head injuries is reported in natr. sulf.
SUMMARY Constitution:
Hydrogenoid
(Asthma, chron. malaria, spring eruptions, rheumatism)
Chief Trends:
Metabolic disturbances from the liver with bilious states, inflammation of the biliary passages and the duodenum
Diabetes
Morning diarrhea, massive, with much flatus
Modalities:
Worse from wet, damp weather
Worse early morning (diarrhea)
Worse from music (melancholia)
(pains in extremities better by movement)
DOSE : Usually in the low and middle potencies, mostly the 6th decimal
KALIUM SULFURICUM
For potassium sulfuricum there is no homoeopathic drug picture because no provings on the healthy have been arranged. So far as it is practically employed, this happens from the reports of Schussler. How easily Schussler makes it a tissue salt and a remedy may be seen in the first edition of this Abgekursten Therapie. There he states on kalium sulf.: “In order to find the indications of this remedy, I compared the pathogensis of sulfur with that of kali carbonicum and the symptoms which agreed I considered as those corresponding to kali sulfuricum”. A typical combination of two homoeopathic drug pictures to form
a third unity is entirely arbitrary, indeed, meaningless, and the further equalization of sulfur and sulfates given as the presumption of Schussler becomes entirely erroneous.
With what right does Schussler see kali sulf. as an important tissue salt for function? Indeed, with none. In any case it is not even known today that the sulfate compound of potassium exerts any necessary function in the human organism. Kali sulf, moreover, outside of sodium sulfate and the earthy alkali sulfates, participates in the excretion of the sulfate anion. But the functioning from of potassium is not the sulfate, but primarily the phosphate and the carbonate. But has it a meaning, can it equalize a potassium sulfate deficit therapeutically? Kali sulf. is an excretory material for plants, because it can withdraw from it the potassium which is so important for them, but it is not a tissue or functional remedy for the animal organism. The theory which Schussler has devised for the physiologic role of kalium sulf., likewise appears arbitrary. On the one side it should be found in the epithelial cells of the skin and mucous membranes, and a deficiency of potassium sulfate should depress the new formation of epithelial cells; therefore the dead cells rest as a desquamation on the skin. For this reason desquamating skin processes and the desquamation after infectious diseases are cited as indications. Furthermore, kali sulf. should be found everywhere where the cells contain iron, and it is supposed to participate in oxidations. A series of general symptoms, together with desquamation of the skin and catarrh of the mucous membranes with yellow secretion, is by him brought into connection with this defective oxidation in a purely arbitrary manner. Even if the theoretic foundation is erroneous, still observation on the skin and mucous membranes have furnished a foundation ab usu in morbis. However, a very large number of observations of unprejudiced cures on these indications would be necessary and nowhere one finds such material which has been critically sifted. The same holds for the modalities given for kali sulf. improvement in the open air and through prolonged movement, worse from warmth and at evening. The thick yellow secretion together with the fluctuating pains and a sad but not anxious frame of mind have led to the designation of kali sulf. as “biochemic” pulsatilla. Apparently worthy of mention is the clinical report: premature mucous rales in the chest, that is, those which appear before other symptoms. For this the potassium fraction might be responsible.
Some older poisonings with larger doses of kali sulf. Per os show the locally conditioned, gastro-intestinal manifestations: burning, heat in the mouth, stomach and abdomen, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and further, cramplike manifestations in the face and in the extremities. Lewin mentions painful burning in the esophagus, twelve evacuations of the stool in two and one- half hours, thirst, frequent vomiting, paralytic weakness of the extremities, smallness of the pulse, coldness of the extremities; later, collapse and brief convulsions accompanied by loss of consciousness. Only after ten days was the locomotor capacity of the legs again normal. This symptom of paralytic- like weakness is interesting in respect to the potassium fractions. According to Lewin there is only one case of chronic poisoning with kali sulf. A man took four grams daily over ten months and died. There was a cirrhosis of the liver and ascites. From this one case no conclusion as to an organ relation can be drawn.
Finer observations on the actions of kalium sulfuricum on the organism are still missing and it is wrong to substitute them by phantasies or assemblage of disease manifestations in which kalium sulf. should be employed with more or less success.
SELENIUM
In nature selenium appears to accompany sulfur. In some rare minerals (zorgit) it is united with heavy metals. Single modifications of the element correspond completely with those
of sulfur. The amorphous state as a light red powder which also can be converted into a crystalline and colloidal form. Moreover, there are (corresponding to its higher atomic weight in comparison to sulphur) also metallic modifications: gray-black crystals which form at 150 and have great stability.
The metallic modification is not uniform. It consists of two forms, A and B in equilibrium. Shifting this equilibrium under the influence of light favors the B-form which conducts an electric current much better. On this depends the use of selenium in electric technic as the so-called electric eye and telephotography. The reduction of electric resistance through insertion of a selenium cell into a suitably adapted circuit is used to release an electric current through light.
In the homoeopathic drug provings and correspondingly also
in therapy, the sulfur like, amorphous modification has been used. It would be important to subject the so sensitive metallic modification to a special proving if one would approach the selenium characteristics more closely.
The compounds of selenium are similar to those of sulphur, but much more unstable. The element itself is considered in school pharmacology as nontoxic.
By Gassmann traces of selenium (and tellurium) have been proven as oxalate compounds of selenium dioxide in the bones and teeth. The asserted non-toxicity of colloidal selenium by Duhamel and Rabiere does not hold for intravenous injections, because Philippi saw chills and spasms after intravenous injections of electroselen into men. Achard and Ramond describe alterations of the blood and blood-forming organs after the injection of colloidal seleniuim. According to Meissner, the inflammatory phenomena which SeH2 provokes at the site of injection are perhaps to be ascribed to metallic selenium deposited in the tissues. The excretion of selenium occurs as selenium methylate (Se(CH3)2) which confers on the expired air (just as does they methyl compound of tellurium) a garlic-like odor.
The pharmacologic -toxicologic reports refer in general to steps of oxidation of selenium, or of selenous and selenic acid or their salts, and are not utilizable for the characteristic action of selenium without further discussion.
Natr. selenosum causes in frogs a central narcosis with gradual cessation of respiration and reflexes, and cardiac standstill in diastole. Warm blooded animals are at first anxious and fearful; in the dog we find, following vomiting and diarrhea, increasing somnolence, irregular breathing lessening of reflexes, clonic contractions, extensor spasms, and finally respiratory standstill. The falling of blood pressure is partly through cardiac paralysis, partly through depression of the splanchnics as well as inflammatory hemorrhagic findings in the bowel, which markedly recalls the behavior of arsenic. This is not sufficient to place selenic acid too close to arsenic pharmacologicaly as has often happened (for example by Kobert). Selenites are essentially more toxic than selenates. A. Philippi describes a chronic intoxication with selenites and selenates. It was characterized by anuria and lasting glycosuria with selenates, while selenites should cause only mild, transient manifestations.
According to Modica, selenium should produce protoplasmic destruction and increase of nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus and chloride excretion. The action on carbohydrate metabolism, interesting because of selenate glycosuria, has been studied by Jones.
For a long time selenium compounds were much studied in the treatment of carcinoma because Wassermann had employed organic selenium compounds, as eosin-selenium, with result in mouse tumors. A practical significance has not been attained by this study. With electroselen, that, is colloidal selenium, an improvement of the general state, increase of the appetite and body weight, is said to be obtained. Kranz Busch sees therein with right a homoeopathic involuntaria, since the weak condition is the essential indication for selenium.
Leeser, a Consultant Physician at the Stuttgart Homeopathic Hospital and a member of the German Central Society of Homeopathic Physicians, fled Germany in 1933 after being expelled by the German Medical Association. In England Otto Leeser joined the staff of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. He returned to Germany in the 1950s to run the Robert Bosch Homeopathic Hospital in Stuttgart, but died shortly after.
Otto Leeser wrote Textbook of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Leesers Lehrbuch der Homöopathie, Actionsand Medicinal use of Snake Venoms, Solanaceae, The Contribution of Homeopathy to the Development of Medicine, Homeopathy and chemotherapy, and many articles submitted to The British Homeopathic Journal,